Friday, July 22, 2011

Hippies made a film in 1970 called Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came, a naïve but interesting idea, nevertheless. But what if people had a way … of opting out of all sorts of things they find awful? What if you never had to leave your house, almost? That was the subplot of 1995's The Net with Sandra Bullock and Dennis Miller. But in real life Middle Class (White) Americans are now poised to do just that, with Education and almost everything else.

The U.S. Department of Education report, released June 23, shows the achievement gap between white and Hispanic students has not closed at all since the early 1990s, with the overall difference between the groups remaining above 20 points, or roughly two grade levels, on a scale of 0 to 500.

"With everything that the state of California is trying to do, it's frustrating that the achievement gap really hasn't moved," said Alicia Berhow, administrator for the Latino Educational Attainment Initiative, an outreach project of the Orange County Business Council.…The report shows a 21-point gap in math between fourth-grade Hispanic and white students in 2009. At grade eight, the gap rises to 26 points.

The gap is similarly wide in reading – 25 points in fourth grade and 24 in eighth.California fares even worse than the U.S. average, trailing the nation by 4 to 7 points in fourth- and eight-grade reading and math.

The full report is here. Boiled down to its essentials, despite twenty years of sustained federal and state efforts, Hispanic (that means mostly Mexican) kids are about two grade levels behind White kids. This makes public schools a sink-hole for public resources, as well as being hell for any White kids unlucky enough to be lumped with significant amounts of Hispanic and Black kids. Despite all efforts, considerable sums of money, and the best educational minds spending 20 years on the matter, learning has not caught up to White kids. It remains, fairly abysmal.

This has significant impact on public culture, taxing, spending, and voting.

Education, in K-12, simply does not work for Hispanic and Black kids, save as a fairly obvious patronage operation. The dismal performance of DC public schools led voters to … toss out Mayor Adrian Fenty and Superintendent Michelle Rhee, in favor of the old-style, Marion Barry patronage. Black voters in DC don't expect their kids to learn (and the elite like the Obamas and Clintons before them certainly don't send their kids there). They expect the school district to provide jobs. Same as the Atlanta Public Schools, with Steve Sailer repeating the Atlanta Journal-Constitution story, about cheating parties, erased test forms, and the like done by Assistant Superintendents, to Principals, to teachers, on down the line, all Black which is not surprising given the patronage demands in the majority Black school district. The Black staff that ran the schools knew well, their kids could not meet aggregate test score goals in No Child Left Behind mandates. Nor earlier, Georgia State goals, mandated by the Legislature. So they cheated. Hispanic kids just fail at a lower rate.

No one has been able to make either group, Black or Hispanic, consistently match Whites. For whatever reason, it cannot be done. Meanwhile, as Sailer reports a new federal study shows unsurprisingly, Blacks and Hispanics get disproportionate amounts of disciplinary referrals and suspensions and expulsions, compared to Whites (and Asians). This is not shocking. Nor is the obvious conclusion that when Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he will team up with Attorney General Eric ("My People") Holder to "go after" school districts with a pattern of racial disparities in disciplinary action, what he means is more zero tolerance to expel some hapless White kid who brought a paring knife to school to eat an apple along with a Black kid who beat another kid's head in, during a fight.

Zero Tolerance is just a way to expel White kids to make the numbers look good, race-wise. For the feds, for various grievance groups like the ACLU, NAACP, LULAC, etc.

With all that, why send your kid to public school? Why aren't there busing fights? With parents "stuck" in houses they cannot sell, and job markets frozen? Because either they already sent them to private school, or they are looking at things like the the Khan Academy. Nope, its not the training ground for Captain Kirk's arch-enemy, it is an online, free site providing lots of lessons on almost anything a high schooler could want.

Eventually private school at home will be even more affordable, just have an internet connection, a computer, and watch videos of lectures, do downloaded problem sets/practice, and use online tools for help, tutoring, corrections, and test-taking to measure progress. Drilling for AP tests has never been easier, let alone SAT/ACT. Princeton Review, Kaplan, the Great Courses, are all likely to expand into this space with the money of course being in reduced expenses (no bricks/mortar spaces with heavy staff costs) and piecework test correction, assistance, tutoring, etc. Go at your own pace, avoid ugly peer interaction, learn anything, from Latin to Greek to French, regardless of what the school down the street offers. Avoid Black/Hispanic acting out and learning-lagging, let alone racial harassment, for White and Asian kids.

Indeed, the whole "rating" thing allows kids and parents to pick tutors with high ratings/results, like the Amazon rating system in the Marketplace, or Ebay's rating system, or Yelp!. Wouldn't you like to pick your kids French tutor than just "go along" with whatever is out there at the public school? Yes of course younger kids have to be watched, but work at home schedules can accomplish this. It is more pleasant than sending them off to school every day. Itself quite expensive in public schools if any Extra-curricular activities are included:

Budget shortfalls have prompted Medina Senior High to impose fees on students who enroll in many academic classes and extracurricular activities. The Dombis had to pay to register their children for basic courses such as Spanish I and Earth Sciences, to get them into graded electives such as band, and to allow them to run cross-country and track. The family's total tab for a year of public education: $4,446.50.

"I'm wondering, am I going to be paying for my parking spot at the school? Because you're making me pay for just about everything else," says Ms. Dombi, a parent in this middle-class community in northern Ohio.

With that sort of charges, kids can participate in athletics, music, and other things on a per-sport basis just as easily, in private clubs, the way kids in Europe often do. A plus, as Steve Sailer notes, it keeps daughters healthy, active, and away from bad boys like Levi Johnson, no Bristol Palin pregnant at 16 risks, by filtering out by income levels those kids with single moms, but a bad boy attitude with athletic ability picked up by victory hungry coaches/athletic departments (did I mention, no Levi Johnsons?) That sort of thing keeps boys from getting into fights too much, or becoming overly aggressive or too fearful, or picking up bad habits (smoking weed, not studying) found among say, greatly gifted but poor students on the Football, or Track, or Basketball teams.

It is not just limited to K-12 either. Michael Barone thinks higher ed will burst as a bubble as well. California's UC system is "broke" but is doubling down on diversity, hiring more diversity bureaucrats during the budget crisis. Meanwhile as noted, Jerry Brown signed into law mandating K-12 educators teach "This Day in Gay" about Gay culture and contributions to history. Not only is the law stupid, it takes up valuable and limited time for gay propagandizing at the expense of math and science.

The Great Opt Out has begun. Sooner or later (and it might come sooner due to cash-strapped parents looking to save money on education), various private groups will offer a complete package, and exam-certified results. Your kid can study at home, at his own time, on his own pace, knowing exactly where he stands, in passing various exams to get his diploma, and certification/college credit for Advanced Placement, as well as pushing up his SAT/ACT scores by drilling without enduring acting-out, or simply time constraints of being one of 45 kids in a class.

The internet allows easy delivery, at far lower cost, of the best lecturers on a subject. The internet allows easy, interactive, and very low cost (compared to the public or private bricks and mortar school) delivery of tutoring, exam-correction, drilling, and the like. Mavis Beacon can teach you to type by computer a lot easier than say, a bored Mrs. Diffle struggling to control thirty sugar zonked 12 year olds. Boring drills with the computer can be spiced up a bit by game play, or what have you, motivating kids who struggle. Unlike a teacher with a class full of kids, the computer can slow down or speed up to give a student just the right amount of drill, in Latin, biology, or Calculus he or she needs.

It has not happened yet, because people still think of education as something that happens because of "Miracle Teachers" who look like Mr. Hand, or Edward James Olmos, or Robin Williams. Interspersed with "magical" things like football games, or Quidditch, homecoming, and all the rest. In a word, nostalgia. From the High School settings of the start of "Smallville" and "Buffy" to Harry Potter, that model of delivering education has a lot of power and romance. But …

A wise band once said, "Give me convenience or give me death." The Dead Kennedys were right, too. Vinyl, film pictures, the cassette tape and Walkman, all had their charm, defenders (the film "High Fidelity" with the tiresome John Cusack) and some technical advantages (for vinyl/tape, a more accurate if hissy capturing of the analog sound waves). But like everything else in life, convenience won out. It was cheaper and easier to take digital pictures and store them on your computer. Cheaper and easier to buy first CDs, then MP3 downloads, and put them on your Ipod. It is cheaper and easier to use Netflix than Blockbuster. It is cheaper and easier to use e-books than trot out to Borders and buy a physical book. And it is cheaper and easier, and also more effective, to have your kid educated at home by "the best" online company offering a comprehensive catalog of the "best lectures" by the best teachers, all rated and reviewed. Than hauling them off to be babysat every day by bored and under-trained and often patronage-chosen-only teachers.

This means, of course, that a White middle or even working class taxpayer base is not going to spring for heavy school taxes. White guilt save a few SWPL yuppies is played out. The White Middle Class is not staging a revolution, they already walked out on life. They walked out on Borders, and the shopping malls. Too many hassles, of living among non-White majorities with basically little enforcement of laws regarding harassment or worse, among those favored with the "correct" ethnicity/race. Whites opted out of the book offerings, opting for e-books that have little PC barriers, one way or another. It could be women's porn, the romance novels, easily read without shame on a Kindle. Or something else, a ripping tale of adventure offered cheap. White middle and working class men opted out of television, save televised sports, long ago. There's been nothing but opting out.

The great untold story is the simple writing off of most post-War American institutions by White Middle/Working class people. Marriage, the nuclear family, monogamy, Party Identification, mass media consumption, century old technologies, television, all of it written off largely by a population opting out, and using the internet to move around old ways of doing things. Some of this is pretty awful -- Ashley Madison, the various other "cheating" sites and raising kids in what amounts to a parade of guys through Mom's bedroom. Some of this is sad, the death of network TV, newspapers, film photography, vinyl, cassette tapes, the VCR. And some of this is revolutionary -- the process of abandoning public schools for private online education. [Including, inevitably, a cry for credential by examination instead of by purchasing a degree in Chicano Studies from Yale.] Glenn Reynolds noted that poor bar pass rates by Blacks and Hispanics will create a huge amount of pressure to make sure they pass by lowering the exam standards.

But on the reverse, the mass of White middle and working class kids educated online will want a true meritocracy, grading by tough standards that makes their exam pass rates the equal or better of a degree in Chicano Studies from Yale. If you have a degree, say online from Texas Tech in Petroleum Engineering (one of the top ten schools) and pass the federal certification, with top honors, it ought to make you (and everyone doing that will want this) the equal of a guy from Yale who barely passed. This is more the Chinese model, except that the twist is delivery online of studying and lectures. Indeed the delivery could be global, with results and reputations built hour-by-hour the way Amazon rankings, or Ebay rankings, or Yelp reviews do for various merchants or professionals.

Needless to say, the White middle and working class will do their very best to kill alternatives, like Public Education and particularly K-12, and University education, since their kids won't go there. And desire to take down tony private schools, from Philips Exeter to Yale, by taking federal money away from the latter and larding on taxes on brick and mortar schools. Call it the reverse Amazon tax.

In a sense, public education is already dead, it just doesn't know it yet. It has become a dumping ground for Black and Hispanic permanent underachievers, mostly. [Yes it is true there will be a few exceptionally talented Black and Hispanic kids. In terms of numbers however, their impact will be akin to the Sturmgewehr 44 and the Me 262 Jet for the Germans on either front -- too little and too late. Or one can compare it to the total failure of US White basketball players to compete much in the NBA, despite their numerical advantage.]

A K-12 system that produces only patronage for non-Whites, and poor results, and pushes White middle and working class families towards internet opt-out, will get no votes for taxes. Yes the Hispanic voting juggernaut will come, real soon now. Or not. In the meantime, voting is done by those who show up. People whose kids don't and won't ever go to the local public schools don't tax themselves to school their demographic replacements.

And by the same token, Yale and Harvard are riding for a fall. Yes they are old, established brands, with lots of rich alumni. But they have powerful enemies, who wish to see them broken upon the wheel. Federal funding is probably going to be yanked at some point. And all sorts of penalties for credentials based on school rep, instead of standardized, merit-based tests cooked up. Its easy populism, and while the Ivies may run Wall Street and Hollywood, no one actually likes them. Voting is a popularity contest. They'll still be around, so is the University of Milan. Or the University of Paris. Even Oxford and Cambridge and Humboldt Universities are around. But while they still have cachet, they are not what they once were. Universities are more than just a place for rich kids to hang out before they work at Greenpeace in Paris for a year, and then settle on a fake "respectable" career playing at work. Much of that will move online too, because its cheaper, free-er, and easier.

Commander, you have a leaky hull. There is no comparison between getting flamed for your appearance over an electronic connection, and getting your head bashed, and this post recognized no such equivalence. So-called "proles" perform the latter operation at a far lesser rate than NAM's, if only because no one's handed them the "I got dissed" excuse.

Most Asian & White "proles" are more civilized than any Black middle-class individual. We know who the REAL BULLIES are. I can't believe you could find some kind of solace in misinterpreting what the post is about, and have the audacity to come up with such a warped conclusion. Are you an habitual troll that craves articles like this one?

"as Steve Sailer notes, it keeps daughters healthy, active, and away from bad boys like Levi Johnson, no Bristol Palin pregnant at 16 risks, by filtering out by income levels those kids with single moms, but a bad boy attitude with athletic ability picked up by victory hungry coaches/athletic departments (did I mention, no Levi Johnsons?) That sort of thing keeps boys from getting into fights too much, or becoming overly aggressive or too fearful, or picking up bad habits (smoking weed, not studying) found among say, greatly gifted but poor students on the Football, or Track, or Basketball teams." - Whiskey

This paragraph refers to what I meant, helene edwards. Prole whites are a disruptive and bad influence on other whites. Nearly all of the bullying directed against nerdy whites is done by prole whites typically bad boys, athletes, etc. Furthermore on an unrelated but similar note prole females introduce a lot of promiscuity and drug habits to middle and upper middle class whites girls. Proles are bad for your children obviously not NAM bad but still bad.

Prole whites pick up a LOT of bad behavior from watching/copying NAMS, because they seem to be the only non-pussy whipped masculine role models around. Getting prole whites away from said NAMS would do a whole lot of good, as would providing some decent masculine role models under 65 years old. Speaking as someone who came out of what you guys would probably consider the "prole white" end of things, I can assure you of this. And yeah, prole whites usually retain far more of a residual sense of honor/decency than NAMS do, but it's going fast. If you want to save the white working class, the time to act is NOW.

I don't always agree with you, Whiskey, but you always have good points to make.

One of the problems with contemporary American society is that we treat 15, 16, and 17 year olds like children, both black and white. Minors have very few obligations and get endless opportunities to avoid legal and social troubles due to the mistaken belief that they are still unable to make decisions. In lower strata of society this manifests in the form of diminished penalties for breaking the law repeated opportunities to stay in school in spite of numerous infractions. In the upper crust most “children” do not work and the only thing that is expected of them is to study. The word useless comes to mind.

My wife and step son are Russian. In the Russian primary school system it is perfectly acceptable for a 15 year old to drop out. In fact it is preferred that the student drops out if they don’t want to be there. They only devote attention to students who are willing to hack it. There is no real welfare system for men in Russia. Begging is rare (and so are fat people). They just don’t accommodate people. There is always some work to be had pushing a wheelbarrow somewhere for a few kopeks. In Soviet times the automatic default for the uneducated was “laborer third class” which meant a shitty ration card and a communal apartment, someday … maybe.

It is time we adopt an educational system that weeds out the fools and malcontents. They will be happier and so will everybody else.

Middle class whites are increasingly withdrawing, in a manner similar to the way the citizens of fifth century Rome gave up on their crumbling, dysfunctional empire.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Disengagement.shtml

"Bail"

Eye-balling the Fifth Century

July 21, 2011

When a country works reasonably well—when the schools teach algebra and not governmentally mandated Appropriate Values, when the police are scarce and courteous, when government is remote and minds its business and works more for the benefit of the country than for looters and special interests, then pledging to it a degree of allegiance isn't foolish. Decades back America was such a country, imperfect as all countries are, but good enough to cherish.

As decline begins, and government becomes oppressive, self-righteous, and ruthless yet incompetent, as official spying flourishes, as corruption sets in hard, and institutions rot, it is time to disengage. Loyalty to a country is a choice, not an obligation. In other times people have loved family, friends, common decency, tribe, regiment, or church instead of country. In an age of national collapse, this is wise.

A fruitful field of disengagement might be called domestic expatriation—the recognition that living in a country makes you a resident, not a subscriber. It is one thing to be loyal to a government that is loyal to you, another thing entirely to continue that loyalty when the Brown Shirts march and the government rejects everything that you believe in. While the phrase has become unbearably pretentious, it is possible to regard oneself as a citizen of the world rather than of the Reich.

Home schooling is an admirable form of disengagement for those who cannot physically expatriate. The primary schools once taught enough of reading and arithmetic, and little enough of medioccritizing propaganda, as to render them other than pernicious. Today, no. Here it is worth reflecting, contrary to governmental insistence, that schools are needless, at least for bright children. An intelligent child quickly reads several years ahead of his grade level, at which point school becomes only an obstacle. He will be savagely bored, regard his teachers as imbeciles, and learn nothing that justifies his being there but much that justifies being somewhere else. In the deepening twilight, home-schooling becomes almost a responsibility, a parallel to medieval monks copying Greek manuscripts....

A rosy prediction for the future, Whiskey but I doubt it will be that easy.

You say White families won't vote for higher taxes to support the schools? First how many times has the populace voted for something only for a leftist judge to rule against it anyway?

Secondly due to female hypergamy and misandrist divorce laws, fewer and fewer actual "families" are being formed. As time goes by, more and more men are seeing that cads win, dads lose, and are opting out of the "beta-provider" role since that is nothing but a ticket to supporting an ex-wife while she bangs a string of badboys in the house he paid for. Thus leaving the kids to be raised by single moms - and single moms vote for more socialism every time.

The government will not let us dismantle their NAM jobs programs so easily. As money grows tight, the government will do the only thing it knows how to do - clamp down harder on Whites and go back to the well yet again for more White money.

I think it's more likely that homeschooling will be outlawed and any child not showing up will be taken by CPS (bonus jobs program filled!).

Im sure norway killer was a frustrated over educated beta male!Larry Auster never gets what Whiskey does...the glorification of sexy men leads to acts of beta desperation and in their eyes retribution. This acvt is social more than a politcal one.

"I think it's more likely that homeschooling will be outlawed and any child not showing up will be taken by CPS (bonus jobs program filled!)."

What he said.

In the past few years California has really started putting the screws to home schoolers. Think it's a coincidence that California is also the first state to require students to sit in on "sodomite of the month" indoctrination sessions?

The schools are just too important to the Left. Both as a source of revenue (union dues) and cultural control. Just witness the uproar in Wisconsin earlier this year. Conservatives have ceded the whole of academia to their enemies. There's no way these enemies will allow middle class whites to circumvent this influence. Whether through reform or disengagement, as suggested here.

The likes of Ginsberg, Holder, and Sotomayor have no regard for freedom of expression (except for blacks), free association (except for blacks), or the Constitution (except for Fourteenth Amendment/Commerce Clause power grabs. Once again, to benefit blacks).

Expect decrees stating that, for instance, banning religious instruction in home school curricula is a "legitimate state interest". To prevent "extremism" or "child abuse", dontcha know. Or that majority white home school co-ops are "discriminatory", violate the Commerce Clause, and must be abolished.

Home Schooling was outlawed for years but it seems to have been making a resurgence even among the elite. Its unlikely to be outlawed.

Also CPS is even more widely hated by NAMS (who are "ministered" to it even more than Whites for good and ill reasons) so even if, big of they can hijack the political system, they aren't fans either.

Third, suppression is expensive and by the time we get there, the taxes will be an attempt to get larger percent of a much smaller pie curtailed by refusal to participate by anyones and a thriving gray and black market.

Remember, the Hispanics are socially fairly conservative and while like everyone like handouts, aren't a big fan of thee nanny state being applied to them with high taxes. They will hide income.

Blacks have nothing for the most part to tax.

By the time we get to "utter screw up" a critical mass of Whites will either be impoverished (having nothing much to tax) or as we are seeing now, no longer support the system.

Fourth, the risk and potential for political violence is very high in the US and growing. A 3%'r type uprising could render complex mechanism untenable

I've read a substantial portion of your blog today Whiskey. Here is something for you to chew on -

A substantial portion of your advocacy for beta males is that they tend to be very stable contributors to society and thus tax revenue sources.

Rather than whoring your own beta a$$ out as a tax contributor, why don't you adapt the idea that stealing from one person to give to another is wrong?

I just don't get it. Everything you have described - white average attractiveness women free to forsake you in favor of 'alpha' males, minorities invading formerly nice places to live, etc., would go away if society adopted the philosophy that it is right to demand that one man work for the sake of another. Perhaps that is your problem and why you remain beta. You accept the notion that you are a servant for other humans, generating tax revenue to support non-workers.

I'm sorry, I've been busy working for my family today and thinking about getting some naughty wet poontang tonight for my efforts -

"Everything you have described - white average attractiveness women free to forsake you in favor of 'alpha' males, minorities invading formerly nice places to live, etc., would go away if society adopted the philosophy that it is right to demand that one man work for the sake of another. Perhaps that is your problem and why you remain beta. You accept the notion that you are a servant for other humans, generating tax revenue to support non-workers."

The error sentence there is bolded. Clearly that should read abandoned.

Waiting for the beta male definition. Please, remain beta because you accept your inferiority to others. Remain beta because you accept the premise that it is right to steal from one and give to another. Alphas like me will manipulate the political process so that more poontang and money flows towards me and away from you conflicted, metrosexual, faggoty beta males.

I'm a big fan of technological advantage, pushed constantly over and over again, like the fast-break teams of the 80's Lakers or Wooden Bruins. Competitive advantage for a society rests on constant, not just one-off, "fast-breaks" for technology. Which depends on wide-deep investment in well, beta males. Since that nerdy obsession with constantly improving technology is what gives Western Society an advantage.

Being Western, I want my side to win. So this means a tax system based on a uniform, nuclear society, high-trust, high-honesty environment. Neither the Scottish Clans nor Ireland with all that strife ever produced much technology (despite some considerable proto-chemistry in distilling whiskey). Nor did the Backwoods of America. That sort of thing came from Ohio bicycle mechanics.

Even Single Mothers want a better life for their kids. I suspect anti-online homeschooling will be like Prohibition, or drug laws, so widely flouted as to be unenforceable. And tax evasion is a reality once the populace is convinced most money will be stolen or used for other undeserving people, not them (see Italy, France, Spain, Greece etc.)

Whiskey says - "Being Western, I want my side to win. So this means a tax system based on a uniform, nuclear society, high-trust, high-honesty environment. Neither the Scottish Clans nor Ireland with all that strife ever produced much technology (despite some considerable proto-chemistry in distilling whiskey). "

But your side will never win as long as you accept the other side's premise - it is morally right for them to enforce a slave labor system on you by using the government to do so. Don't you see you are only arguing about degrees of servitude?

As long as you are arguing based on the other side's definitions, you will always remain beta. For you, it will always be a debate of how many men, how many times and how many inches. Either way you are going to get f'd in the a$$.

I feel for the middle class and the working class. They are being flooded with minorities (mass legal immigration and illegal aliens). I have no pity for the SWPL (white liberal) upper-class elite. They are deserve all they get.

Also some of you whom say that a fool like Bristol Palin is middle class have to be seriously joking. She grew up in an intact family with upper class surroundings and her mother is a crazy narcissistic delusional former governess. Thanks to career Palin and her millions from FOX and her books Bristol will get even richer. She's effectively a millionaire and upper-class, not a working class girl.